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In 2011, Japan’s nuclear regulator raised the danger level from an ongoing radioactive leak at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant to 7 on a 7-point scale. Authorities said on Tuesday (August 2013) that a storage tank spilled 300 tons of radioactive water onto the ground.
Here are five things about the Fukushima radiation leak and related investments:
1. Uranium investors are hurt:
The price per tonne of uranium has plummeted since the March 2011 nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, which caused losses to anyone who has invested in uranium mining stocks. Germany’s shutdown of most of its nuclear reactors pushed demand for uranium to additional lows.
How much radioactive material from Fukushima leaked into the ocean?
Scientists measured between 5,000 and 15,000 terabecquerels of radioactive material reaching the ocean in 2011. The biggest threat was the radionuclide cesium. The radionuclides strontium and tritium pose a greater threat to leaks entering the soil, as the soil absorbs cesium and the other two do not.
A terabecquerel is 1 trillion becquerel, defined as the radioactive decay of a nucleus per second; A sievert is a unit of biological radiation dose that is equivalent to about 50,000 frontal-view chest X-rays.
2) Nuclear utility investors are hurt:
Investors in nuclear facilities over the past five decades have enjoyed a decent return on their investment, generally in the range of 10 to 12 percent per year. The Fukushima incident has seriously hurt those investments and many of them have fallen by between 30 and 50%. It can take years to recover, if they ever do. Some investors sold their shares at a loss, to move on to other investments and try to start over.
The Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO) estimated that between 30 billion and 40 billion becquerels of radioactive tritium have leaked into the ocean so far and contaminated it for years, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported.
The damaged plant is still leaking about 300 tons of water containing these radioactive radionuclides into the ocean every day in 2013, Japanese officials said. This massive amount of radiation is poisoning the entire Pacific Ocean on which more than two million fishermen depend for a living and to feed their families.
3) Fishermen’s livelihoods have been destroyed:
Millions of fishermen up and down the west coast of America, the west coast of Mexico, all of Japan, Korea, the east coast of China, the west coast of Canada, and the coasts of Alaska have seen their fishing livelihoods seriously damaged. . Japan’s massive radiation poisoning of the Pacific Ocean. Most of these fishermen who invested their lives in fishing and thousands of dollars invested in their boats are now suffering huge loss of income and loss of funds to make bank payments on their fishing boats. Many file bankruptcy and have part-time jobs on the land to make ends meet for their families. Fishing in the Pacific Ocean, once a billion-dollar-a-year industry, has collapsed and taken a million fishing families with it – a truly horrendous development. Japanese fishermen who followed their parents into the fishing trade have been decimated by massive ocean poisoning across Japan.
How will radioactive material affect marine life?
American scientists say groundwater leaks could get worse. Nicholas Fisher, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in New York, told Live Science in a previous article. “But in the region, yes, there may be enough local seafood contamination, so It would not be wise to eat that shellfish,Fisher said.
3) Force fishermen and women to stop investments:
Fishing families now do not have additional funds to make other investments such as gold, silver or stocks. Some are losing the same house they called home for the past 5 to 10 years due to falling behind on mortgage payments, a situation that results in great displacement of families, depression and divorces. The Christmas celebrations are grim as families struggle to put enough food on the table each week. In some families, parents are forced to withdraw amounts from their retirement accounts just to help feed the family.
4) Play the lottery:
As desperation continues to eat away at them, some fishermen allocate a few dollars each week to place bets on their state lottery, praying and hoping that the big victory will lift their family out of the economic hole they have faced. This is a long shot, but someone wins every week, so more people are still playing the lottery chasing that one-in-a-million chance, even though it takes dollars from their meager budgets.
5) Millions of farmers lose money on contaminated crops:
Farmers in Japan have suffered greatly with most of their crops radioactively tested and unfit for the market. Farmers in the largest growing region in the United States, the famous San Joaquin Valley in central California, have had to spend thousands more per farm to implement protective strategies to protect and clean their produce from any particulate radiation. residual. Dairy farms in Hawaii, the western United States and Canada have found radiation particles in their milk and were forced to dispose of thousands of gallons. These farmers struggle every month trying to grow their crops free from contamination. Therefore, the investments of time and money on their farms are now questionable if the profits from the harvest will outweigh the annual expenses. Some have chosen to grow crops in indoor greenhouses to provide a measure of protection. Still, tiny radiation particles enter the water source and are absorbed by plants even in greenhouses, so the problem continues. Many of these farmers are now struggling to make mortgage payments on their farms and ranches, as well as to pay contract workers. Only time will tell how severely this radiation pollution affects the millions of people who live near the Pacific Ocean.